


You Are What You Are

by spaceowl



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: M/M, Unhealthy Relationships, obviously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 21:41:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10773015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceowl/pseuds/spaceowl
Summary: "You're hurt," Eddie said, like it was a shock. The clear voice was something from Casablanca, the words projecting to every wall. They echoed and filled up the air like blackdamp.





	You Are What You Are

**Author's Note:**

  * For [violenteer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/violenteer/gifts).



> It's been literally a year since I've posted, smh.
> 
> Happy (belated) Birthday, goose! Hope this is along the right lines.
> 
> If you enjoyed it, please comment!

Waylon wondered what the architectural term for this area of Mount Massive would be, out there in the real world. It reminded him of period television shows, with the high open arches along the hallway leading directly onto the grass outside, rain falling all around, a beautiful fountain in the distance. Of course, Waylon could see a mangled arm hanging over the edge of said fountain, which kind of ruined the majesty of it. He stepped closer to Eddie's side.  
  
"Don't look, darling," Eddie told him. Too late for that, but Waylon turned his head anyway.  
  
Should he ask Eddie where they were? He wanted to, but the timing felt careless. The point of this was to play along with Eddie's newfound desire to save them both from this nightmare. This was Waylon's new goal – follow the groom, and get out.  
  
Eddie had been awake longer than he had been, he knew the hallways and the layouts the way a patient would. Not some basement desk jockey who wasn't even given a permanent office in all the (relatively brief) time he'd worked for Murkoff. Laptop to laptop, desktop to desktop. It was a miracle Waylon wasn't dead yet, and he knew it.  
  
When he'd fallen down the elevator shaft, he had landed on his wrist. He wasn't sure if it was a break or a sprain, but it was agony the whole time that Eddie had been calling down to him.

"Tell me you're okay," he'd halfway begged.

And Waylon, in a moment of madness quite befitting of his locale, had sobbed out on a ragged unused voice, to anyone, " _Help_."

Help. How pathetic could he get? Who the hell would hear him?  
  
Eddie paused in his tragic recital of whatever climactic Lifetime bullshit he was spewing.  
  
"You're hurt," he said, like it was a shock. The clear voice was like something from Casablanca, the words projecting to every wall. They echoed and filled up the air like blackdamp.  
  
Waylon said nothing, but clutched his hand to his chest, a damned useless broken wing. An escape—? No. The elevator was between floors with no opening. The elevator had no top hatch. Above him was a maniac, even if the ladder hadn’t broken. Waylon was a tiny canary at the bottom of a deep, deep cage. He took a deep breath, because this was where he would die.

Despite what he had expected, though, Waylon didn't die in the bottom of an elevator shaft in some decrepit wing of a nightmare. He was pulled up, flinching and begging instead of kicking and screaming like "the other whores." Now he was walking down a hallway with the same guy who had chased him with a knife two or three hours ago. Go figure.  
  
"Sweetheart?" Eddie said. Here, and now. The pet names were plentiful.  
  
"Yes, Eddie?" he said. After so long being silent (in more ways than the literal), his voice still felt foreign to him. Even more so when he tried to sound so unbothered. The floating inflection clicked off his teeth and labeled him a cheat.  
  
"You look worried, dear. We'll be out of here in no time, if that's your concern," he added.  
  
"It is, actually," Waylon said. He was never good at this subtlety stuff. "Um. Well, I mean—"  
  
"Oh? You want to leave so badly?" Eddie said stiffly. "To leave me?"  
  
This again. They must have had this exact conversation at least thirty times by now. At least Waylon felt well practiced.   
  
"No, Eddie, but the other people here scare me." He was becoming as repetitive as his partner in prison breaking, but what was the point in coming up with a new response every time? It was wasted energy and added a risk of saying the wrong thing for no reason.  
  
"I'll protect you, darling, surely you know that," Eddie countered.  
  
"I know, Eddie, but I miss T.V.," Waylon would sigh, and then Eddie would say—  
  
"Television! Huh. Nothing but liberal nonsense. I don't know why you watch that crap,” and—  
  
"Yes, Eddie," Waylon said, over and over. Then they would keep walking, and that would be the end of that. Repeat ad nauseam, every time they would linger and Eddie would go off course. It was a reset button of sorts. Like an activation phrase for a sleeper agent, if the agent’s mission was to calm the fuck down.  
  
"Oh, my beautiful, agreeable girl," Eddie hummed, grabbing Waylon's waist and pulling him in for one of his sporadic hugs. Knowing what it was, Waylon went limp and let himself be twirled into it, his face smushed against Eddie's chest. He could hear the man's heartbeat like this, and Eddie didn't say a word. He seemed to be appreciating the moment, and Waylon forced himself to relax into it as Eddie pressed his lips to the top of Waylon's head, kissing the blood and other liquids that matted it together.  
  
Waylon leaned his head against stained broad cotton stretched over strong muscles, the stitches thick and grating. The smell of the blood and the gore that still clung to this man he was following, thick and grating. For all of it, though, and despite how he wanted a quick escape more than anything… Waylon was so tired. He wondered in a fit of lonely insanity if he could rest his head, just for a second longer. A moment more to linger with the rain pat patting on the grass a few feet away, white noise in his ears and a warm body wrapped around him for the first time in ages. It was dark and quiet, and he was just so tired.   
  
The human part of him perked up; could he let himself breathe, now? Survival answered immediately; no. Never again, probably. This place was inside of him – _suck it up, though, Waylon,_ he thought. _Get home_. So he lifted his head as though he was only barely in control of the skeleton inside him, lifting each bone separately and heaving his exhausted flesh to follow suit.  
  
"Don't you want to leave with me?" he asked Eddie, since anything firmer may yet tip the scale from protection to predation. Anything might, really; but Waylon would give careful words his best effort if it kept a strong body between him and fists and clubs.  
  
At his question, Eddie looked out across the visible yard. Eddie's eyes didn't track like a person's should, it seemed. They looked up from Waylon's disgusting hair and traced the decomposing gardens for silhouettes instead of people, a hunter looking for deer. Waylon still looked for people; that's probably why he missed so many of these walking bodies who didn't quite fit that bill anymore. Why he was grabbed and caught and hurt so often. But if he gave up on people, then this place would become his world. His sprained wrist throbbed as he tightened his grip around Eddie.  
  
"Yes, let's go," Eddie concluded, smiling down at him. "Tarrying alone is never a good look for an unmarried couple, of course. You don't want to think of what people might say about us if we were late."  
  
Waylon hummed at the situation Eddie had apparently placed them in, not sure what he could possibly say to respond. Who would have the time to spread suburban gossip in a place like this? Who was here to give a shit if they were late? What were they late for, anyway?  
  
Alice in Wonderland shot through his head and he full body winced. Cry and wish for it all he liked, but Waylon wasn't safely dreaming under a tree. This was no easy nightmare. God, though, he still found himself desperately wishing it was. Eddie thought the wince was from his wounded wrist, and so gently dislodged Waylon's arms from around him.  
  
"Don't worry your pretty little head about it," Eddie said, impersonal but easy, another set phrase, like reciting a lullaby. Something his father had said, Waylon presumed. Probably too often.  
  
"I won't," he said.  
  
It was the facade of a real conversation, but Waylon was addicted to even this rote exchange. Being utterly alone for weeks on end in a chair in a room with a screen immediately followed by a whirlwind tour of hell for a day or two – it really put "good company" in perspective. If he was talking to a half lucid madman, well, that was fine at this point. At least he wasn't talking to himself.  
  
Eddie pressed a firm hand to the small of Waylon's back, politely prompting him to get a move on towards the next turn. Down this hall, around that corner, into another more secluded hallway. Was this the way out? God only knew. Waylon moved again like a skeleton taking stuttered steps, stumbling on autopilot. And if they got out. If he lived, then what? If-then, his escape was boolean – life or death, free or trapped. If he made it out, then where would they go, what would they do? Murkoff didn't give a damn, my dear, my darling.  
  
_Don't think in newspaper clippings and movie quotes, Waylon,_ he thinks, the thought viciously firm. _It's a slippery slope, and you're sliding fast_. So instead he thinks in careful, straightforward realism: "I wonder where we’ll drive to. I wonder where we’ll sleep."   
  
(The answer still doesn't come, but at least Clark Gable stops gripping his throat.)  
  
“Where we’ll go.” Is it 'we,' now? He looks at Eddie, who looks down at him with a sad little attempt at a comforting smile. The guy was still all pomp and poetics, but he had so far upheld the vague promise he had made a hundred thousand hallways ago to not be quite as... actively stab-happy. Still, Waylon should use him and leave him – wants to, it’s the only reasonable option – but that wasn't how Waylon was built.  
  
"You worry too much," Lisa said once, after Waylon had already spent ten minutes fretting about some key ring he had found in the strip mall parking lot. After listening to him waffle about what to do for way too long, she had finally taken them from him, handed them in at the liquor store checkout, and come back to the truck.  
  
"What if the owner doesn't ask at the liquor store?" Waylon said. They were sitting in the idling pickup, listening to the late night DJ playing Crosby, Stills  & Nash as December wore on around them.  
  
"You can't account for everything," Lisa said. "I mean, hell, like you can act like you're the king of planning. Half the time you go to make waffles you forget to buy chocolate chips."  
  
"That isn't that big of a deal," Waylon said, though he frowned a bit, remembering how their sunshine kid (only the one back then, their youngest had not been born yet; they were all so _young_ ) would always, always ask for mommy's waffles before daddy’s.  
  
"Neither is this," Lisa responded.  
  
"But what if we just confuse whoever it was even more? What if they come looking for their keys in the parking lot and don't know we moved them?"  
  
"Then they're idiots. Well, no, they're not, I know. Don't look so scandalized," Lisa said, humming. "God, what... So you're arguing for non-interference now? We're trending dangerously close to international politics, loverboy. Not exactly a date night topic."  
  
She was teasing. Waylon knew this, a pretty sideways smile on her dark brown lips. Maybe it was the job market, maybe it was the mortgage, maybe it was the weather – God knows it wasn't just the fucking keys. Whatever it was, Waylon hadn't been in the best mood for letting things go, his edges all spider webbed glass.  
  
"No," he said immediately. "I just. Like, I wish I could know how it turns out. What we should do next time. If— if we helped or if we just made it worse."  
  
"I don't know, Waylon," Lisa sighed. “No one does.” She turned away from him in the car, waving outside like the falling snow could help her explain chaos theory itself to her husband. "Sometimes... sometimes you just have to do what seems right in the moment. Or you don't have to, but you do it anyway. And if someone has to get new keys cut, you live with it. It's not the end of the world. It's also really not our fucking problem."  
  
"Mm. Yeah," Waylon said, but only because she seemed tired.  
  
In the here, the now, Waylon tripped on a burnt chair leg that had blended in with the sooty floor and stumbled forward. Eddie caught him, which was helpful, even kind, but it didn't stop Waylon’s heart from taking off at the speed of light when he felt the large hands grab his shoulders.  
  
He flinched, and after he was steady Eddie let him go immediately.  
  
Oh, god. Did he notice the flinch?  
  
He didn't replace his hand where it had rested on Waylon's back. Shit; he noticed. If he noticed, was that breaking their unspoken agreement to act as a young engaged couple? What happened if he wasn't able to act like this was normal?   
  
"Be careful," Eddie said. "There are worse things here than chair legs to trip over."  
  
No quotes, no dated idioms. That was strange; Waylon stared. He lingered a bit, but when Eddie looked back at him he followed. No quotes. No dated idioms. Not another awkward cycle on the phonograph that Eddie had become. What did he mean? This couldn't be the rote script he seemed trapped in. No wedding party or fifties film would have "worse things than chair legs." Did Eddie— did he get it?  
  
"Worse things than we’ve seen so far?" Waylon pushed. If following his gut had gotten him this far, maybe his luck would hold out. Eddie stopped, and Waylon bumped into his back in the dark. It was like walking into an oak door – he felt his sprained wrist throb and heard a woman's voice wriggle through his mind, unbidden: _I just walked into a door. I just fell down the stairs. Don't send the cops 'round again or we'll sue. Get off our damn property._  
  
Eddie was silent, but tense. Waylon saw his back muscles shrug and shift. Luck, schmuck.  
  
"Sorry," Waylon said. He didn't know what he was saying it for – just wanted to say it before things could start escalating. "Sorry, I don’t know—"  
  
"Do you think this is Hell?" Eddie asked, offhand, like he was asking the temperature. If he should wear a coat. It was said half over the end of Waylon's apology, like he hadn't even heard him, or like he hadn't wanted to hear him. Where had this come from?  
  
"What?" said Waylon, and things escalated.  
  
Eddie turned to face him in the half dark of the hallway and Waylon could almost think the shadowed side of Eddie's face was as unmarred as the side he could still see. For all Eddie's given protection and warm arms, he still was the Phantom to Lisa's Raoul. Oh so dangerous and fantastic, but not the one Waylon was in love with.  
  
"I know why I'm here," Eddie said. "I’ve done things. Why are you."  
  
It wasn't a question. He wanted Waylon to say something specific, and Eddie already knew the right answer. Waylon took a step back, and Eddie took a step forward. This game again. Why was Waylon always hunted? He'd never so much as slapped a fly, it couldn't be retribution. Eddie stepped again, Waylon stepped back, raising his hands palms out.  
  
"I— I was knocked out by Murkoff," Waylon managed. "I woke up—"  
  
"Did you?"  
  
"I woke up in a chair, in the engine—"  
  
"What about before that?" Eddie pressed. Waylon stepped back, and Eddie again stepped to follow, and like this they waltzed down the hallway. "What did you do just before that?"  
  
"I don’t know what you want me to say. Eddie, you're scaring me," Waylon tried.  
  
"I woke up," Eddie repeated, not mocking Waylon but in the way Eddie always mimicked these things like a mynah bird, his tone that detached record skip of his voice saying words that weren't his. "I woke up in a chair, in the engine."  
  
"Eddie," Waylon repeated. He didn't want to run yet, if he could possibly salvage this. He was fast, but he was lost. "No, that was me."  
  
"No, that was me. I was in the engine. You, acting all innocent," Eddie said. "You, the little slut who _put me there_."  
  
Waylon's back hit the wall. "Oh, shit," he said. "Oh, fuck. I’m sorry." And this time he knew exactly what he was apologizing for. What the answer Eddie had wanted was. Waylon remembered, and his fingers curled.  
  
"I woke up in a chair," Eddie said, almost desperate. “And my face was wrecked. And my mind was gone.”

This hallway had glass windows, not open arches. Waylon couldn't see anything, had yet to find more batteries. His back was against plaster and peeled wallpaper.  
  
"Eddie, I tried to help."  
  
"Then why are you in Hell with me?"  
  
"I made a mistake," Waylon said.  
  
"That's a terrible reason," Eddie said.  
  
"I know," Waylon said. "I— I didn't think it through. But I thought— I thought I could help. I thought I could help everyone."  
  
He couldn't stop responding as if Eddie was lucid. He wanted to believe he was talking to a person; as he said before, he was addicted to not being alone. At least this anger was at Waylon entirely, at what Waylon himself had done, and not at some ghost of a woman.  
  
Eddie was looking straight at Waylon, and neither of them knew what line came next. Forgive me, darling, but you know what they say; you always hurt the ones you love... Oh, I love you despite your mistakes... Something Broadway, something big band. Something brutal. Waylon swallowed.  
  
"You didn't help _me_ ," said Eddie. Like a little kid, stuck frightened forever. "I told you to save _me_."  
  
"I didn't know how to, Eddie. I wanted to," Waylon said. "I wanted to help you. Save you. I couldn't, but I swear I wanted to."  
  
A beat of silence, lasting a minute or an hour. Eddie's shoulders slumped. Waylon slowly lowered his hands, peering at Eddie's expression in the darkness. The sharp of his anger was fading, but he couldn't place the furrowed expression Eddie now had on.  
  
"I know you tried," Eddie said. "You tried, but that bastard – that brute – he threatened you, didn't he? Scared you?"  
  
Did he mean Blaire? "Well... yes," Waylon said, considering it. "But that didn't really happened until aft—"  
  
Eddie's voice ran right over him as he grabbed Waylon by the waist.  
  
"He won't scare you again," Eddie said. "That bastard. That monster. I'll protect you this time." His large palm came to hover over Waylon's thin injury, nearly blocking it from sight. "No more falling down the stairs."  
  
Was it an order or a promise? Either way, Waylon was just fine avoiding stairs. Or elevator shafts, as the case may be.  
  
"Right," said Waylon. "No... No more falling. I know you won't let me fall again. Right, Eddie?"  
  
Eddie pulled him by his waist into yet another hug, jostling Waylon's arms until they circled around Eddie's neck.  
  
"You're not like the rest of them," he said into Waylon's ear. Waylon shivered. "You're better. You're mine."  
  
"I'm yours," Waylon agreed. "And you're mine." For now.  
  
Eddie chuckled, pressed his lips to Waylon's neck, and hummed Suite: Judy Blue Eyes straight into Waylon's throat. Waylon managed a weak smile at the clever connection that Eddie had made.  
  
"Do you remember playing this at my birthday party?" Eddie whispered. Gentle and small, as quiet as a pin drop.  
  
The silence stretched on. No. No, of course Waylon didn’t remember that – he’d never met this man before Murkoff put him on the other side of a pane of glass. For a second, Waylon was curious. He wanted to ask who Eddie thought he was holding, try to understand; but Waylon probably didn’t want to know. Didn’t need to, either – he didn’t want to look into the swirl of Eddie’s mind anymore. He was done with digging up more long dead tragedies. Waylon just wanted to survive this.

So instead he hummed along with Eddie, spinning a wobbly harmony together in the deserted hallway. Rocking a killer’s head in his arms, he pretended he wasn’t terrified.


End file.
